Author 




Title 



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Imprint 



Lines To An Ancient Live Oak 
and Other Verses of California 



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: : : By : : : 

Laurence Edward Innes 



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Copyrighted 1921 
By L. E. Innes. 



UNES TO AN ANCENT LIVE OAK 

The branches stood from an ancient tree 

Out at angles phenomenally. 

The limbs were gnarled of this ancient oak 

And a bit grotesque. The sunlight woke 

Its lines to life, and strangely made 

On the ground beneath odd shapes of shade. 

But while I looked on this broken tree, 

This grave Senor whose dignity 

Was still extant in his ruined state 

Where he stood surrounded by flowers elate, 

I felt indeed that this Grand Seiior 

Was gravely guarding some old-time door; 

The door had vanished, his grandees fled, 

But he kept as he could his faith with the dead. 



A SUNSET ON A SILKEN SEA 

When the sun and the sea at nightfall came to a place 
where their ways must part 

I stood on the strand in a strange sweet land that clutched 
at a stranger's heart; 

1 looked on a blue green ocean where the day and the night 
had met, 

Where violet tips and lavender lips and a million jewels 
were set; 

1 looked on a blue green ocean, it was silk like a fairy's 
gown, 

And it shimmered away in the dying day to the place 
where the sun went down. 

1 looked on a blue green ocean to a sky dark red like wine, 

And the surf was pink in its curling brink and the hands 
of Time supine 

Lay for a moment idle while the silken soul of that sea 



Lay still as death while an angeFs breath was drawn in 
ecstacy. 

I looked on that wonderful ocean where out of a rainbow 
sky 

The colors there had crept from the air and lay on its 
breast to die; 

And ever the soft sound beating of waves like a muffled 
drum 

Seemed ever to say, "God rest the day, for the stars and the 
night have come." 

I looked on a blue green ocean in the tender tide of the day 

And I could not feel that the thing was real, so subtle had 
been the play 

Of light and shadow that merged in heat that hung in a 
filmy haze 

Where the sun and sea clung tremulously in the parting of 
their ways. 



A GARDEN OF DAHLIAS 

A garden of Dahlias bloomed by the road 

And the traffic went by 

With a most careless eye, 

Oh never looking, — 

Well, scarcely looking — 

But this only showed 

How little they knew of the red and the brown, 

Of the purple and green, 

Of the el-e-gant sheen 

Of the flowers that glanced upward, then smiling bent 

down. 
You say they were blown by winds passing by? 
Oh, maybe so, — ^well, maybe so — 
Oh, I really don't know. 
But still I am thinking that Dahlias try 
To behave in a modest and ladylike way. 
But) oh, how they sigh 
When the bold passerby 
Fails to observe their most gorgeous a^ray! 



THE CHALLENGE OF THE WINDS 

When the winds blow from the mountains where the tips 

are touched with snow, 
The green and rolling valleys where the golden fruit trees 

grow 
Seem to shiver with the portent of the evil days ahead, 
Seem to feel the life about them lying cold, and gray, and 

dead. 
In the great leaves of the palm trees does the ghostly rustle 

run 
And the oranges peer fearful to the warm rays of the sun; 
All about them roses flutter with a sobbing, catching breath, 
And the heart of all the Southland, throbbing wOdly, 

whispers, "Death?" 
"Can it be?" the Pepper mutters to the Eucalyptus tree, 
"That the soul of beauty dieth?" Then they look toward 

the sea. 
Come the warm winds softly blowing from the distant 

tropic isles. 
Come the warm winds softly blowing; and California 

smiles. 
And from the laughing ripples of the high ascending sun 
Back into the mountains rush the cold winds, one by one; 
Then the rose leaves settle softly, then the poppy lifts its 

head. 
And only on the mountains, where the snow lies, lies the 

dead. 



ELDER BROTHER OF THE LAND 

Grave Redwood men annointed you with latin name, 

And yet, what panoply of state 
Could make you greater than you are, 

You who were born great? 
Long years before I passed this way 

You cast your shadow, and the shade 
Through long days rose and fell. 

Ere 1 was made 
What wild things nested in the heart of thee, 

What rivers ran 
In rippUng freedom at your feet? 

Ere we began 
O silent watcher of the night. 

What moons have shone 
When watching for my race to come. 

You stood alone! 



Wind and wave, and but a space away 

The rockbound coast. 
Drone out the passing of the years, 

An innumerable host. 
Within the far, high reaches of the sky 

A whisper grows, 
Great branches stir, or is it but a sigh 

For us, immutable, with woes? 
Giant Sequoia, tree with latin name. 

High priest beside the human gate, 
Lord Bishop of the splendid hills, 

Untouched by fate, 
A restless human humbly comes to thee 

Where you in benediction stand 
And asks your blessing as he passes through, 

A younger brother in the land. 



-\^^r^: .vr^v.v.^^!^w^^^^ 



CALIFORNIA: THE DAWN 

Now comes the Painter with a brush sublime 

And where before had stretched the sflver sea, 
A gray ghost ever marking timie 

Against the pulse beats of eternity, 
The rich warm glories of the day descend 

In gold, in orange, and in crimson lanes, 
Onsweeping in the paths that never end. 

Then lavishly as one who scarcely deigns 
Be niggardly he sweeps a brush 

Across the great broad velvet land. 
And in the vivid, quivering hush 

That runs from mountain top to golden strand 
One feels that here at last a day is bom 

That no black painter of the night can wipe away: 
At least, so I have felt in California's mom 

That here upon the peaks of dawn had come a final day. 



THE PURPLE PATH 

The purple path is a ro3ral road that leads you on to a gay 
abode 

Where dreams, if they don't indeed come true, come as 
close as they can to you; 

Where you pinch yourself as you view the skies and the 
gorgeous gardens stun your eyes. 

And you drink the ocean and eat the land and grab some 
friend by his outstretched hand, 

And say, "Great Scott, but Fm glad Vm here, especially, 
George, at this time of year." 

And then in the Spring you take your grip and you go by 
train or go by ship, 

Pr whatever it is that will take you there when you MUST 
go home: and then grim care 

Will sit on your shoulders and grin and jeer, and you'll 
wish, old man, that you'd stayed out here, 

And filled your pipe and sat in the sun where the pilrple 
dreams pass one by one. 

And you'll blink your eyes and you'll often feel (when 
you get back home) that it wasn't real. 

But it's ten to one that another year will find you settled 
and living here, 

Believing, Fm sure, as I do, too, that purple dreams in the 
sun come true. 



THE DAY IS HUNG WITH HELIOTROPE 

le day is hung with heliotrope, 
And the poppy flames, and the buds of hope 
Are opening here, each branch athrill. 
Each hour that passes glows and dies 
With joyous face to the radiant skies: 
Each night that follows sounds the drum 
Of still more cheerful days to come. 
And over the highways autos fling 
Their whirring wheels that forever sing, 
And down the valleys and up the hills 
The road lies open and one who wills 
May leave Grim Trouble and woo Bright Hope 
Where the days are hung with heliotrope. 



TORCH AND FLAME 

Here where the feet of the pulsing world are pounding 
the pavements down 

There stands a Mission old and gray in the heart of a busy 
town; 

Faded the walls and dim the aisles, but here by the grace 
of God, 

Once in the long-departed past the feet of the Padres trod. 

The sands of Time through the hour glass run, but the 
thing that the Padres did 

is Torch and Flame in the living day, and its light can not 
be hid. 

Strange is the musk that scents this spot, as though those 
good gray friars 

Were standing here in their shadow world; and when my 
spirit tires 

I come to stand by these crumbling walls, and I think of 
those earnest men 

Who when they were beaten stood four-square, and as 
earnestly fought again. 



ROW ON ROW, THE ORANGE TREES 

Row on row the orange trees in Calif omia stand 

And when they blossom in the Spring the scent upon the 
land 

Is pungent in the nose of day, and on the wings of air 

Romance is blown up and down, indeed most everywhere. 

Row on row the orange trees in California stand. 

The good brown mountains at their back, their feet upon 
the land, 

And overhead the bright blue sky, and to the West the sea, 

And was there ever such a land, old friend, for you and me? 



^mWM^'WW:^^ W^\7m 



UENVOI 

ion the face of day the curtain falls. 

Tis night. And now, regardless of the one who calls, 

This fact remains : our friend, and all she was, has passed. 

You may dispute, deny, and claim the day at last 

As one who on the morrow comes again, 

Still kind, still glad to mother breeds of men; 

Yet still this fact remains : death, grim death, has come our 
way. 

For when the lady lifts her veil — Ah ha! ANOTHER day! 

And so the final word that's said is ever this~--GOODB YE ! 

Oh, only for a time you say? WeU, also— so say I! 



